For the first time, Superman became more than just a strong man. He became a tragic, lonely figure loaded with tons of survivor guilt (although surrounded by a super girl, dog, monkey, horse …). Even though he was a nearly omnipotent character, he could never change the past, save Krypton, or even save the Kents. True, the stories were juvenile and often repetitive, but within that framework, Weisinger was obsessed enough to hammer out some amazing concepts.

I really couldn’t stand the Byrne “Man of Steel” era. That wasn’t Superman, and many of us knew it – it was like a powered-down Elsewheres version plunked into place and made canon for awhile. When John Byrne’s antiseptic version of Krypton exploded, I for one was glad it was gone. Weisinger made Krypton a wonderful place that you could never go back to, like a lost childhood. That’s the difference.

Well look, you don’t make Superman interesting by powering him down. You make him interesting by telling good stories with emotional resonance. All Star Superman did exactly that.

Wow! Thanks for all of the feedback. Apparently Superman strikes a chord with Newsarama readers and that’s really cool to see.
Thanks for the suggested reads and pros/cons outlooks regarding my suggestion. In a way I look at it like James Bond. For the most part the Bond movies are not connected (Casino Royale & Quantum of Solace are exceptions). The only constant is Bond and his supporting cast of characters (Q, M, Felix, etc). Once you have that foundation, the writer and director pick the story they want to tell and run with it. Does the lack of story continuity make Bond any less interesting or entertaining? Not for me, but I’m sure some folks would disagree.

@CAMO: Sure you could have both. I’m not saying that Superman CAN’T be done as a regular serialized series of stories with continuity. I just think the best Superman stories are the iconic ones. A good writer can work within almost any confine and make it work. Personally I don’t want good stories, I want the best:)

@Shaun: More Madame Mirage will be coming later this year. Keep your eyes peeled for more news in the near future.

Take care,

Filip Sablik
Publisher, Top Cow Productions
Read two issues of The Darkness at http://www.topcow.com/darkness

If we all had just a sliver of the goodness that superman radiates, the world would be a very different place.

Disgusted by the current incarnation of the character (how many times can the guy loose his powers and cry in one year!?) I’ve gone back and started to re-read Byrne’s post-Crisis reboot.

Are they the greatest stories ever told? No, but they have pacing, they have character development, and they have consistency (we’re talking writing here, not art) that successfully created an entertaining run. And this run – fun serialized, interlocking stories that built on each successive issue continued with Stern and Jurgens and well into the late 90s with DeMattis, Schulz, Casey, and Loeb.

These guys prove that serialized stories with this character can work and work well. These guys showed, each month, why Superman is an icon.

The funny thing is that the current crop of writers, beginning with the misguided Lee/Azzarello books on through Buseik and to an extent Johns, seem to subscribe to your theory (or fear of writing an icon).

The books have been parsed out gimmick-driven trades-in-waiting for years, which each story having little to no impact on Superman or his supporting characters; or, in the case of New Krypton storyline, affects everyone but Superman who occasionally shows up to cry or complain or give up his powers.

And now DC has essentially given up trying to tell any decent stories by tossing the character aside and presenting us with, *yawn* another origin story; a staple of writers looking for a quick way to make their mark before people realize they have no imagination.

Personally, I would love it if DC took the character back 15 years or so and had a steady on-going serialized book with complimentary one-shots to showcase the “icon” aspects for both the adoring and casual fan.

There is no reason why there can’t be both.

But these past few years, with Kurt and Geoff, and later Geoff and James, have gotten a lot of great stories.

My favorite of them is probably Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes. It does a great job of being both a Superman story as well as a Legion story, distilling both characters down to their most basic essences to show why they’re important, and why they’re important to one another.

Other favorites….Up Up, and Away, Brainiac, New Krypton (can’t wait to see where this is going next), The Third Kryptonian, and Camelot Falls. All standalone, in continuity Superman stories.

The most successful adaptations of Superman into other media are arguably the Richard Donner Superman film and Smallville (particularly its first few seasons)–both of which are also variations on Superman’s origin.

Why is Superman’s origin so compelling, but the continuing adventures of Superman are less so?

http://jakeekiss.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-spider-man-should-be-more-like.html

And I can’t believe no one’s mentioned “For The Man Who Has Everything” yet. One of the best Superman done-in-ones ever.

My favorite Superman comics are:

1) the first year or so by Siegel and Shuster, both in comics and the newspaper strip, when the concept was pure, the scale of action was small enough for lifting a car to be thrilling and Superman was a radical vigilante crusader for social justice–knocking down slums, roughing up war profiteers. Casey (?) did an interesting, sad take on the original conception of the character out of place in the modern world, late in his run a few years back.

2) the Weisinger era with its’ barely disguised Freudian underpinnings; particular favorite are Superboy comics featuring Krypto, many of which were misunderstandings leading to abandonment issues (i.e. “Sob! Why does my master want to kill me?”)

3) All-Star Superman & DC One Million: Morrison’s love letter is the best modern take, by a country mile

4) Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #29–”The Legend”, about a tribe of superstitious intelligent gorillas on post-”Great Disaster” Earth who worship the misremembered legend of Superman, and keep his empty costume as a religious icon. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but it’s the perfect critique of what superhero comics and their fans were becoming even as early as the 1970s.

I read the Super-books from the Byrne era through the Death of Superman and for a few years after that, and I liked them, but I can’t point to a particular story from those years that I could single out as movie-worthy, or iconic, or one that I would lend to a friend looking for a good Superman story. It’s not like X-Men where the great stories are in-continuity. Again, the candidates have been mentioned: Red Son, All-Star, For All Seasons. I would add Kingdom Come, which should count as a Superman story. I would add Birthright. Single issues: Action #775 is up there.

I do really enjoy Johns’ current run, though. Loved the Legion and Brainiac stories, though a bit lukewarm on New Krypton so far. Maybe this will be a run that generates some classics.

Why? It literally made me believe that the impossible could be made possible. Forget the special effects and the casting for a moment. Although important, that’s not what I’m talking about.

In life sometimes bad things happen. Disasters kill thousands, real life madmen plot to kill innocents and sometimes it just seems that the inevitable bad thing will happen and nothing can stop it.

My 12 year old eyes saw the helicopter crash. A girl is hanging by a thread. She falls followed by the helicopter, potentially killing hundreds of onlookers below. It’s inevitable, right? Disasters happen all the time. Then out of nowhere a man flies UP to the falling girl and helicopter, defies probability (and physics) and forever changes what is “doomed to happen”, and all of a sudden hope becomes real. The evil that would ordinarily have been inevitable and would have been disastrous is defeated.

As a kid who was picked on daily for being too short, too thin, having glasses, for liking to read – who just wasn’t “cool” – who was going to bow to the inevitable fact that the world was just cruel and thats the way it was going to be – Superman the Movie literally gave me hope that you don’t HAVE to accept cruelty. That the impossible could be made possible and that hope for something better DID exist.

I know a lot of people just see an actor in blue tights in front of a bluescreen. To my 12 year eyes I saw hope in the fact that I didnt have to accept the world as it was. That one person, whether he was a “strange visitor from another planet” or not COULD make changes in the world for the better.

I know that’s pretty heady stuff but honestly, THAT’s why Superman will ALWAYS be the coolest.

And I still cheer and smile uncontrollably during the helicopter scene every. Time. I. Watch. It.

Stand-alones: All-Star, Red Son, Secret Identity… A publisher can’t be wrong!

To be honest, I love Supes in theory, but not so much in practice. I don’t like a lot of the in-continuity stuff I’ve read, although I do have a soft spot for the Byrne reboot/Man of Steel stuff. I also liked Exile, For Tomorrow (so sue me), and All Star Superman (too bad Morrison didn’t quit Batman and stick with All Star Supes instead). One sotry you didn’t mention, but might be my favorite Superman story of all is Loeb & Lee’s Superman For All Seasons. If you’re only ever going to read one Superman story, that’s the one I recommend the most.

I liked Kurt Busiek’s recent Superman run, I just felt he left the book too quickly and I haven’t liked where it’s gone since then. Johns has done good work in Action, but both Johns’ run and Busiek’s runs were plagued with delays that messed things up quite a bit. I think I liked Busiek’s run better, on the whole, though.

Mostly, I’d just like to see Supes really put his powers to full use more often. People complain about him being “too powerful” but to me it always seems like writers go overboard in trying to power him down or making him hold back. I think Superman, for being THE GUY in the DCU, seems to get his ass handed to him way too often. It’s been true in the comics and animated shows alike, either he loses his powers or he simply gets overpowered by the villains (or even other heroes) far more often than necessary. That’s when I get frustrated with Superman books.

That said, Superman fails as a concept when folks come in to tell stories that happen to have Superman in them, rather than tell Superman stories. Superman stories at their core are about a guy from the Midwest fighting for what’s right–even if that happens to be in outer space.

I’m not sure I’d want to see Superman as a series of disconnected stories. I’m not a continuity hound, but I like subplots that develop over time.

erm..not really.My favourite superman story is ‘Whatever happened to the man of tomorrow’ mostly because of the Kara and the legion scene it has to be said